


Hiding That Which Frightens You Behind a Pretty Smile

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [39]
Category: The Watcher (2000)
Genre: Abandonment, Apathy, Attraction, BBW, Closets, Confusion, Dancing, Dark, Dark Love Story, Discovery, F/M, Fear, Letters, Manipulation, Murder, Overweight, Pity, Secrets, Self-Harm, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Serial Killers, Stalking, Voyeurism, Weight Issues, compassion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23470498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: I meet a handsome stranger named David Griffin who professes himself ready for a challenge. Noting that something feels wrong about his smile, a fact he sees reflected in my own, we fall into a strange relationship trying to discover each other's secret. All the while a serial killer stalks and murders pretty young women in the city which surrounds us.
Relationships: David Griffin/Me
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [39]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 4





	Hiding That Which Frightens You Behind a Pretty Smile

**Author's Note:**

> The David Griffin entry...
> 
> Keanu Reeves did not want to be in the film. A friend forged his signature and he was forced to do it. He doesn't like it. But it seemed fitting in a way that since I'm in a pretty dark, bad place emotionally at the moment too that I tackle this particular film and tale now.

"Hi there."

I had been both afraid and hoping that the stranger would approach me. Sitting at a table in the dining court of the mall, I had felt the man's eyes often coming to rest on my face and had been excited in that fearful way which happened anytime a man that I found attractive showed me the slightest bit of interest. He was around six feet tall, about a decade or so older than myself, with longish dark hair and brown eyes with a slight Asian slant to them. I scolded myself while I ate my supper, the bullying voice inside of my brain delighting in warning me that the man was not interested; that he only was fascinated by the sight of a big girl like myself further committing society approved suicide by adding the fat of another hamburger to my already large body. 

Even when the stranger approached me and said "Hi" the voice told me to wait; that the punchline was coming soon.

"Hi," I said back, placing the burger back in the paper wrapping it had been served in. I felt a bit of ketchup at the corner of my mouth and wiped it off hurriedly, hoping that he hadn't seen it.

He had, of course. Sitting down at my table, the man whetted his thumb, brought it to my face and wiped away the remainder of the condiment off of my skin.

"Thank you," I said, feeling the color race to my face in order to paint it a shade only somewhat lighter than the ketchup had been.

"David," the man said. "My name is David."

"Thank you, David," I restated my gratitude with the addition of his name.

"You're very welcome..." David returned, looking hopeful for the revealing of my name then too.

"Erin."

"You're welcome, Erin," he said with a wide smile.

His smile was beautiful but it didn't feel _right_ as it sat perfectly on his handsome face. It was like if you took a really expertly forged Mona Lisa and placed it in the Louvre instead of the real thing. One that _almost_ looked perfect but something was off about it. You'd think to yourself that it must be the colors or the lines but after studying these for a while they all matched up and you were at a loss as to what it truly was that made you feel uneasy. Still, you knew it was a fake, could feel it in your soul by the way it unnerved you just sitting there innocently amongst the other genuine masterpieces, taunting you with the fact that it _should_ be real, would be beautiful and wonderful if it were, but it just never could be.

I smiled back at him, though. "Why are you sitting with me, David?" I inquired, afraid to take another bite of the hamburger incase I looked like a glutton or the usual other things associated with being overweight.

"Because I like to sit back and watch," David answered. "I like to admire beauty."

He pushed the burger in my direction.

I smiled again shyly. I was always smiling, just like this David appeared to like to do. Maybe he had learnt that if you smiled people thought you were normal too. "But I'm not beautiful. People don't see me. Why did you?"

"Because I like to watch, like I said before," he restated. "To sit on the edge and find where the true beauty lies. It's a challenge to find a girl as beautiful as you are but unaware of it. Most girls are so proud and too loud. But you...you're sitting lonely in a corner so you won't be noticed," David said. "I like a challenge. To prove to you that I truly _see_ you."

I smiled again but I couldn't really mean it just like I often didn't mean it when I did. If you smiled people mistook you for being happy and fine. People wanted you to be happy and fine. Then they needn't pay too much attention to you and find out what your real thoughts were and your actions behind closed door. 

They didn't need to see you then.

I knew then that that was why I had been able to tell my new friend's smile had been false while most anybody else would probably have been oblivious.

I watched as David's eyes went to my lips and teeth and his smile faded for a few seconds before he put it back in place effortlessly. As if the false Mona Lisa had been hanging in her frame slightly askew and he had simply put it back in place.

"Your hiding something...some secret," he said. "Let me watch you close enough to find out what it is."

I nodded, knowing that the man had realized my smile was a forgery now too.

* * *

When I awoke the next morning it was to two facts which I believed were not related at all: the memory of my meeting with a stranger named David and a newspaper where the headline read that another young woman had been found murdered. The first pleasant thought was instantly erased by the second unpleasant one as I found the paper on my front door. The latest victim's face stared up at me from a photograph when she had been blissfully ignorant of the fact that soon she would be gracing the front page of most of Los Angeles' newspapers simply because she had died. She was one of those beautiful girls that you see in California. They all look so similar in a way to everyone else in a city made up of the gorgeous that you can hardly tell them apart after a while. Kind of like those actresses in small roles in movies or on television. You start confusing them until a trip to the IMDB informs you of your mistake. 

Staring at the paper, I read the article out of a sense of guilt. I felt bad for her, my empathy kicking in and imagining, as I always did, what her final moments had been like on the world we both had unknowingly shared together. The guilt was due to the fact that I was still happy despite my sorrow because I had a date with a handsome man named David Griffin and this poor girl's death wasn't enough to make that go away.

* * *

"So why do you think he is doing it?" David asked me as we sat together in the restaurant. 

We had been having a relatively fun time, him with his pretend smile and me with my own, only sometimes I felt that mine was genuine in his presence, at least. I was comfortable with the man but didn't know exactly _why_ since his smile never once felt as real as my own those few times. Inevitably our conversation had fallen on the murders of women in the area and I found myself angry with myself that I was upset that the people at the nearby table had been talking so loudly and the morbid topic had disrupted the little piece of ignorant peace I had momentarily been experiencing. I felt angry and guilty and in so much pain that I knew I would be unable to face it that night without seeing it as I had found out that I could.

"I _can't_ understand," I replied. "Because he is sick?"

David's eyes glistened. "Do you think he can ever get better?"

I shrugged and frowned. "Oh writers like myself always like to write that they can...that someone exists out there that can save them but...maybe if somebody is that damaged there is nothing that can be done. I think that's probably closer to reality."

"But romantics just can't _see_ it," David said mockingly.

I nodded and looked at the bubbles on the plastic top of the cup to my drink. Punching the one in marked "Soda" I looked up to see my date looking at me without his lips upturned. "You ever worry that you will be next, Erin?" he asked.

I laughed cynically. "Sure...right...Tackle a big girl like me. That makes a lot of sense. Statistically serial killers avoid fat targets. We're too much trouble."

David folded his arms and placed them on the table as the smile that really wasn't one made a bright reappearance on his face. "Maybe he'd like a challenge."

"Like you?" I asked.

He nodded then, his dark hair bouncing slightly.

"So how are you enjoying this one?" I asked. "You succeeded after all. I know that you see me now."

David Griffin shook his head. "No. I haven't even started yet. The real challenge is to open you up."

I thought he was talking about emotional verbalization or maybe a flash of something dirty. I only found out a few days later that he meant something different entirely.

* * *

On our second date, David told me that on the night we first met he had just broken up with his girlfriend.

"So I'm a rebound," I stated in disappointment, feeling that this meant he would leave me soon enough.

"Don't think of yourself like _that_ ," he told me as we walked to my front door. "Think optimistically. Think of yourself as the last."

His words rang as false as his smile and I sighed. My date saw my sorrow. In an instant, I suddenly found Griffin's arms around my waist as he grabbed my arm and spun me around in a dance. My feet were awkward and I stumbled against him until I found the strength to find my left and right feet, so to speak, after I looked into his dark, dead eyes and tried to dance only to see if I could evoke something akin to life in their deep and hidden recesses. Maybe that was why I really agreed to see him all of these times, I realized. To see if I could really make him feel: the own challenge which I had fallen into. I couldn't though. When we had finished, all he offered was a laugh which sounded like a bell with a cloth wrapped around the clapper.

"I remember when I was in second grade," I started to painfully reminisce. "I was performing this skit with three other girls in my class. One was my best friend and we had to dance. I spun her around with the arm raised like I'd seen them do in the movies. But when I looked at the rest of the class watching us they were looking at me like I was strange, like I thought I was a guy or that I liked this friend, Vanessa. But it was only because I'd seen other dancers do it and I was too fat to feel like it could be done with me."

With his usual grin, David backed away from me but then took my hand and raised it. He spun me around like I was a thin girl or a big one who deserved to be treated like everyone else.

My rotation completed, I fell into David Griffin's arms again.

"You...you can open me up now if you want to," I said softly, pressing my head into his chest.

He stroked my hair gently. "Not tonight but soon," he stated almost tenderly.

* * *

David cancelled our date three nights later. He phoned me at the office where I worked as a typist and told me that his workload had been too busy at the store where he was the assistant manager. The inventory had been put off for too long and he needed to stay late in order to do it. I did not know if it was a lie or not. It was hard to tell what was the truth with David or merely fiction. The smile had put me on guard always to the fact that he could be deceiving me at any given time.

"Okay. I miss you," I said, handing him the truth for what could very well be a lie.

"Don't worry. Next time you see me I'll have a _big_ surprise for you," David claimed.

"Any hint?" I asked.

"Unh unh," he replied. "It's the kind you have to experience."

We said our send offs and I placed the phone back on the cradle, telling myself that it would be all right. I'd see David soon and, at least, there hadn't been a murder in about three weeks. This all flew out the window, however, when I went back to my desk and my boss started yelling at me for receiving calls at work.

* * *

After the office closed up for the night, I went to the mall for supper again and did some shopping. One of the cashiers was unfriendly when I bought a jacket on sale. She tried to impress upon me to save the receipt incase I needed to return it because it was too _small_. She kept stressing this fact and I knew it was her subtle way of letting me know how fat she thought I was without saying it outright. I was tired and hurt already. The boss had been short with me and I couldn't quite understand because he didn't get that angry when the other workers did the same thing with their families or boyfriends. A man on the bus wouldn't let me sit next to him even though it was supposed to be a public transport. Not being able to see David, who had a habit of being strong for me and putting things in perspective, only made me feel even worse. By the time I arrived back home, I was shaking from all of the inward suffering but couldn't cry.

Rushing to my bedroom, so quickly I failed to see one of my chairs abnormally placed in the living room, I proceeded to do what I often did when I was in too much emotional pain: tried to turn it physical.

I had started hurting myself when I was around eighteen years old. Going through the first full blown appearances of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I had been in complete and devastating agony. It was almost worse, however, when even this faded away to apathy and I just wanted to feel anything. Cutting myself, biting, scratching...I did these things to either see the pain I was feeling or to coax myself into feeling something when I felt only dead inside.

These days the apathy had faded but the urge to hurt myself when I was in too much emotional agony remained. After having changed into my nightshirt, I sat on my bed and started to scratch my bare legs until I drew blood. My fingers splayed, I ran them up and down my skin until skid marks of red were made. Afterwards, I stared at them and felt oddly better, although, in a few hours I knew that guilt would replace that peace when I saw what I had done. Too tired then, I simply crawled under the covers and turned out the lights, the scratches on my legs reminding me of my failure to keep my promise to God not to hurt myself again.

* * *

Sometime in the night, I woke up when I thought I had heard something. My heart racing, I asked if anybody was there and realized how stupid the question was. If somebody was they shouldn't be so I wouldn't like any reply they handed back anyway. None came and I sat in the dark on my bed listening for any kind of sound to give an intruder away. All I heard was the ticking of my clock and after fifteen minutes I lay back down hoping that any burglar wouldn't have been patient enough to have stayed quiet and still for so long.

* * *

I expected to hear from David that morning like I usually did but the phone never rang and I started to get worried. At work I waited for another call, even if it did get me into trouble again, but none came. I rushed straight home after I'd finished work to check and see if there were any new messages on my ancient answering machine.

There weren't any.

There was a letter however.

**_You have a lot of flesh but it is soft and smooth and pretty, no matter what they tell you. Why do you want to damage it? Why do you hurt yourself? I can't understand. That's for other people to do to you. I was the one who was supposed to open you. Not yourself. I saw what you've been hiding behind your smile. You scare me._ **

**_Goodbye,_ **   
**_David_ **

I had finally managed to evoke one emotion from David Griffin afterall.

* * *

"Hello," I said to the policeman behind the counter at the LAPD. "I'd like to talk to Joel Campbell."

According to the papers, Campbell was in charge of the recent related homicides.

The cop scowled, his brows and lips slipping downwards at opposite ends. "What's this about?" he asked.

"The murders of the young women," I stated. "I think the killer was targeting me....that I was dating him for a while."

The man looked me over and looked as if he were torn between a laugh or a sigh. "No offense ma'am but you don't look like the other victims."

It was true. I wasn't thin or possibly deemed as appropriately beautiful because of this fact.

"He said he wanted a challenge," I countered. "I found shoe indents in the carpet in my closet and some strange bit of twine."

The cop tried to look sympathetic but I could tell from his eyes that the emotion was just another false Mona Lisa in the Louvre. "You say that you dated this guy. Have you tried to contact him to see what he's up to?"

"I never went to where he worked or lived. He always contacted me but I haven't heard from him since I got his goodbye letter."

The cop's sympathy turned genuine but I could tell it wasn't because he believed that there was a connection between David Griffin and the murders. He simply thought that the man I had become involved with had at last escaped from a relationship with a fat girl when he had finally come to his senses. 

I was getting the letter out to show the policeman when he grabbed my arm and stopped me. "Just wait a while and see if he comes back," he urged. "You wouldn't want to spoil your chances by accusing a guy that actually likes you of being a killer, would you?"

Actually liked me.

As if nobody else would. I pulled my arm away and left the note in my pocket. 

"Thanks," I said without meaning it.

"You're very welcome," he returned which was as much of a lie as the word it was in response to had been.

* * *

Back in my bedroom, I took the note out from my pocket and read it again. It was just as well, I guessed. If this Joel Campbell had seen the self harm references he likely would have believed that I was crazy and reasoned the other stuff away.

There was no other way David could have known that I harmed myself, though, unless he had seen it for himself. I pulled the bit of twine from out of my pocket too. It was sharp.

Sharp enough to open me with.

Carefully I looped a bit around my finger and then tightened it until I felt it cut. 

_"So why do you think he is doing it?"_

A ring of blood appeared underneath the wire and I watched as it dripped down towards my hand.

_"Why do you hurt yourself?"_

Maybe there were answers to both of those questions we could have given to each other if we'd only been willing to stop hiding behind our smiles.

Or maybe the ones that existed we could barely even understand ourselves and so would have only been worth our fake smiles in themselves.


End file.
